Milestones

[Tony]

From my understanding of what SG will be like there will be many forms of progression in the game. The world is always in a constant state of progression since there will be events and changes that occur with or without your input/presence. There is also character progression (as in being able to improve your character's capabilities). BM has stated that there will be many enemies that will be very difficult to defeat until your character has progressed enough.

Likewise, there will be story progression. BM has hinted that discovering what is actually going on in the world around you is going to be a huge part of the game and many things are not what they might at first appear to be. Being able to actually adventure; discovering new things, exploring an exciting and dangerous world, uncovering new secrets... this is what I'm most excited about in SG.

This sense of adventure is sorely lacking in many RPG's. Generic quest systems found in many RPG's lessen the sense of excitement and adventure. When NPC's tell you where to go and what to do (so-called quests) it severely limits any sense of adventure and discovery. You're basically playing as an errand boy or delivery man. Since SG will not have a generic quest system I'm very excited to be able to actually explore and adventure again!

 

[Pancakez54]

There will be bombs. Many, many bombs.

 

[fluffydino2000]

Going back to the milestones: assuming we are correct that the milestones shown were dual wielding, parry 1 and 2 and improved movement in heavy armour, how are these executed? For dual wielding, we know it won't unlock the ability to dual wield as we can equip any item in any way at any time, right? So does it add an improved dual wielding move set or does it change the way the off hand is positioned?

For the parry ones, does it improve the speed and precision of parries, does it improve the amount of force your character can deflect or is this decided by physique?

And finally the heavy armour movement, does this give the player more precision hen stepping and lunging, one would imagine that the length of a lunge, for example, would again be controlled by physique? Or maybe it improves the characters general movement allowing them to maintain balance more effectively and to be able to shift there weight in the most efficient manner?

I guess what I'm trying to ask is how are milestones improvements actually executed?

 

[Pilluminati]

All I hope is that they aren't passive stat boosts and are usable throughout the game.

 

[Madoc]

Milestones is a bit misleading, maybe we should think of a better name (technique?).

You should think of them less as bonuses you pick up along the way but how you choose to train your skill. You pick a milestone and then train towards it, you won't necessarily want to max out skills, instead you pick some milestones that represent what you want from that skill. It's hard to explain how they will work as they are many and diverse, a couple of examples would be misleading. Occasionally they will unlock the ability to do something new, most of the time they will modify a skill in a way that is beneficial to a particular play style or types of items and powers.

Skills are purposefully generic and give you an apparently simple and flexible set of abilities, milestones are what diversify your character and make the difference when you make specific build choices such as using small shields, medium armour, staves as defensive weapons, offensive casting, being a "sniper" etc.